


The Instagram Incident

by Jackson_Overland_Frost



Series: It's that AU [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Attempted Sexual Assault, Established Relationship, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Harley and Peter’s lab, I mean, I think that’s it, Instagram, M/M, Not really though, Oh, Peter’s Spider-room, Social Media, The Ellen Show, The watch thing, but not really, in fact, sorry if that makes anyone uncomfortable, the rest of the avengers aren’t really mentioned, they are dating, you know what I’m talking about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 19:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17883953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackson_Overland_Frost/pseuds/Jackson_Overland_Frost
Summary: Peter makes an Instagram account for his alter ego. People start thinking him and Harley are dating, which is a problem because they actually are dating and secret identities are a thing that exist. Working Title: Peter’s Identity Crisis





	The Instagram Incident

Photography had always been a huge part of Peter Parker’s life, and once he became Spider-Man, the photo opportunities that opened up to him were basically endless. As such, his photo library was now filled with pictures of the sunset from Very High Up™, various selfies he had taken with criminals he had webbed up, close-ups of Avenger battles, and various dogs he had found while patrolling. These photos just kind of sat there and did nothing though, and it made Peter kind of uncomfortable to just let them sit and catch dust when he was so used to posting everything he took to his Instagram account, which was fairly popular already. Still, it would be good PR if Spider-Man had an Instagram account, right? 

And so, the account @SpideyNYC came about. It wasn’t very original, but when he created it there were already several accounts claiming to be him, as well as a variety of fan accounts. He quickly uploaded a few pictures he had taken on his last patrol, as well as selfie he had taken with a nice old woman he had helped with her groceries. He also went ahead and followed the Avengers that had social media, and requested to follow Tony’s personal account. Within moments he received a text message on his watch with a screenshot of the follow request. 

 

Direct Message To: Mr. Dad

Mr. Dad: Is this you

Intern Parker: So what if it is

Mr. Dad: hmmmmm…

 

Literal seconds after he received the text message, his phone pinged with a notification- “Tony Stark has followed you on Instagram”. Before he could dive towards his bedside table and silence it however, his phone began to blow up with notifications, and at that point he just straight up turned off Instagram notifications entirely. Then, before he forgot about what he was about to do, he called Ned up on the phone and asked him to come over as soon as possible. Aunt May wasn’t home yet, Ned’s parents weren’t home yet, Peter promised that it wouldn’t take too long but he couldn’t say anything over the phone because it had to do with his internship, and pretty soon Ned was on the way. 

“So you made an Instagram for your alter ego,” clarified Ned. The two boys were now sitting on Peter’s living room couch.

“Yes.”

“And you want me to use my coding skills to make the account untraceable back to you, your phone, or your personal Instagram account.”

“Yes.”

“Dude,” said Ned. “This is awesome. Give me your phone right now.”

Ned plugged Peter’s phone into the laptop Peter had told him to bring along, and began hacking while Peter connected his earbuds to his watch and called his boyfriend. Peter knew that Tony had probably told him about the account already, not to mention he had just requested to follow him, so he was pretty sure Harley knew why he was calling. 

“Hey babe,” Harley said, “I’m on my way over right now. Is Ned already there?” 

“...Harley, how did you know why I was calling, and why in the world are you on your way here?” asked Peter, who was for once infinitely glad that Harley could basically ready his mind. Not that he would ever admit it of course, but it was nice to have someone who could sense his feelings and instinctively knew what to do- a far reach from his own instincts which, in spite of his spider-sense, almost never led to him making good life decisions. 

“Because you made a Spider-Man Instagram account without even accounting for how you’re going to hide your identity because it was clearly an impulse decision and now you have to sort out how this whole thing is going to work. The first thing that probably sprung to your mind since you’re surrounded by tech geniuses such as myself is that even someone who’s only a half competent hacker could connect this account with your personal, which explains why Ned is there. Also, you always need me for some reason or another, so I’m coming over to help you sort out the mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“That is possibly the most convoluted reasoning I have ever heard,” Peter said.

“Probably not, but I’m also not wrong.” Harley ended the call and Peter settled back in his chair to wait, only to have Ned woop and pump a fist into the air before unplugging Peter’s phone and handing it back to him. Peter opened it to his new account and choked when he saw the follower count- just over 3000 in literal minutes. Most of the comments on the few pictures he had up were just randoms people asking if he really was Spider-Man, as well as the occasional compliment on his photography. As far as he could tell, almost everyone agreed that he really was Spider-Man since Tony Stark was following him. He quickly responded to a few of the comments, saying yes, he was Spider-Man, thanks, I took it from the top of an apartment building in Queens, and ignoring the couple hundred requests for him to follow whoever back. Ned packed up his laptop and began scrolling through his own phone, presumably following Peter, but then just looking through his feed and a variety of other apps. They sat in general silence until somebody knocked twice on the door.

Peter rushed to open the door and let Harley into the apartment, who, to his credit, did take off his shoes before hugging Peter. Aunt May really didn’t appreciate having to clean the carpet, so everyone was required to take off their shoes at the entrance. Harley then handed off a bag of groceries to Peter and went over to sit on the couch while Peter busked himself with putting things away in the refrigerator. By the time he got back to the pair on the couch things had spiraled into a debate about whether the fins on flying fish actually counted as wings or not. 

After several painful minutes of couch discourse, an alarm went off on Ned’s phone, signaling that it was about time for him to be heading home. Ned’s parents had a rule that they didn’t care much where he went after school as long as he was home before they were and he told them where he had been. If he wanted to go out at a different time or for longer, he had to have permission and his mom had to be notified in advance. It was pretty much established that Harley would be eating dinner at Peter’s house by then, so after they said their goodbyes, the two finally got to finishing their homework, since it needed to be done if Peter want to go patrolling later that night. 

About thirty minutes after Ned left and the fish discourse had by extension ended, Peter and Harley were both done with homework and were now messing around with programming a crime detecting app for Peter’s watch. They were just working on hacking into police records so that they could sync them up with the app when Aunt May unlocked the door and they had to quickly close several tabs that were definitely illegal and hide several others that were only probably illegal. Aunt May only sighed and moved to kitchen, very obviously looking anywhere but the computer screen, and began to make dinner for the three. 

At this point, Harley coming over to have dinner with the two remaining Parkers was a regular thing, though usually unplanned. Most of the time he would just show up with a bag of groceries so that May wouldn’t have to pay for food and focus her money on things like rent and bills. Usually they wouldn’t have expected such a gift without mentioning it, but May did try and argue the first few times, only to realize just how stubborn Harley could be. There was nothing like opening the door to your apartment only to find your boyfriend dressed in over the top spy gear trying to shove several bags worth of groceries into your refrigerator. Ah, good times. 

Aunt May’s cooking was slightly burnt, as usual, and the boys both stuffed their faces and thanked her profusely for the delicious cooking, as usual. Soon after, Happy arrived to take Harley back to the tower and wish Peter and May both a personal goodnight from Tony. It was a good night, although a bit cold, and almost everyone settled in to sleep, besides a select few, with no knowledge of what was to come. Good for them, to rest while they still want to. 

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

The next day after school, Harley and Peter were at the tower messing with Peter’s spare web-shooters, which is what they tested upgrades with to see if they actually worked before adding them to the ones that he actually used on a semi-daily basis. The suit Peter usually used, the one in his watch that Tony had helped fix up after they had first presented it to him, was sitting on the bench next to the pair, along with the Iron Spider suit. Tony had somehow made the web-shooters on the Iron Spider suit hold about twice as much web-fluid while also being more compact and Peter was going figure out how he did it without asking Tony for help or else. With Harley’s help of course. He was also going to figure out how Tony put those awesome spider legs in the suit and then he was going to add them to his everyday suit because they made fighting literally six times easier in every way. Also they looked cool. 

They soon moved into Peter’s “spider room” to try out the web-shooter improvements and make sure they didn’t have any weird side effects they didn’t account for. The “spider room” was a spacious room with really high ceilings which not only connected to the lab, but also to Peter’s bedroom a few floors up. It had a huge spider web spanning an entire corner of the ceiling and the floor was covered in large climbable boulders. It was basically just Peter’s comfort space. The spider room also happened to be the perfect place to test web-shooters, since nobody would notice another web in the huge space anyways.  
While Peter readied the web-shooters on his wrists, Harley stepped off to the side to get a good angle, and started filming with Peter’s phone. 

“Put your mask on before you test them,” Harley said, tossing said mask to Peter. 

“Why?” Peter asked, already putting his mask on regardless of whatever reason came out of Harley’s mouth. 

“Because I’m going to film you and it’s going on your Instagram story, which is decidedly far too empty right now.”

Harley aimed the camera at Peter, who stared at him for a few seconds before aiming his web-shooter at the ceiling. However, since the pressure inside the was so much larger, the webs shot out with a larger force, and because Newton’s third law says so, the recoil was great enough to knock Peter backwards onto his butt. And then, because the web went so much faster, it hit the ceiling and released all the tension, effectively pulling Peter upwards by the wrist to let him hang from a stand in the middle of the room. Harley started laughing as Peter turned to stare right at the camera, and cheerfully zoomed in way too close to Peter’s face. While Peter let himself down, Harley sent the video to his very own self. Then, using his own phone, he posted the video on his own Instagram story, tagging Peter’s Spider-Man account.

While this was happening, Peter grabbed his phone off the rock that Harley had placed it on and shot a video that consisted of him slowly zooming into Harley’s face, focusing on his grin. He posted on his story at almost the same time harley posted on his, tagging Harley’s public account and writing in the margins, “That should not be the smile of someone who is actively trying to ruin my life.” He then followed Harley with his Spider-Man account, just for the sake of if it. Harley literally didn’t notice at all though, because he had turned off notifications himself when Tony started following him a while ago. 

“Harley,” said Peter, sneaking up behind Harley and wrapping his arms around him. 

“What, Peter?” 

“Follow me on Instagram, Harley.” Peter waved his phone in Harley’s face, causing Harley to subconsciously lean into him out of fear of getting hit. 

“I’m already following you, idiot.”

“You are, but you’re not following Spider-Man.”

Harley blinked, and used Tony’s following list to follow Peter back. Then, without any warning, and only because Peter was still wearing the mask, he snapped a selfie of them and posted it on Instagram while Peter stared over his shoulder. He then simply locked his phone and put it in his pocket. 

“So if we can’t just pressurize the web canisters,” Harley grabbed Peter’s hands and held them up to his face under the guise of checking the web-shooters, “then how did Tony fit so much into the Iron Spider shooters”

Peter was in no way tricked, but Harley almost never held his hands willingly, so he let it go. “Have we tried taking them apart yet, or?”

“We have literally gone over this eight individual times, Peter. We aren’t taking them apart because without Tony we have no way of figuring out if we put them back together correctly, but we can’t get Tony to help us or he’ll know that we’ve been messing with them.”

Tony and the boys had a sort of deal with the spider suits. The two could mess with the suit that Peter wore every day as much as they wanted- add whatever upgrades, make it look however they wanted, etc. They also had permanent access to the Iron Spider suit and they were allowed to mess with it if they wanted to, so long as a Tony couldn’t tell what they had done afterwards. However, Tony’s eyes were basically lasers when it came to anything mechanical, able to spot any difference, and so the boys were too afraid to mess with the Iron Spider suit too much outside of staring at it really hard.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to try, right?

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

It was a few days and several Instagram posts later when Peter and the rest of the self proclaimed “Spider Squad”(consisting of Harley, Ned, and MJ)’s phones buzzed in their pockets. Peter, in spite of his watch, continued to keep his phone on him, as the watch could only contact Harley, and using Karen to constantly remain in contact with the rest of his friends simply felt unnecessary when his phone still functioned perfectly well. Also it fit perfectly into one of his suit’s pockets, and who was he to let such a perfect fit go to waste. 

“Hey guys, what just happened?” Peter was on patrol at the time, but he often kept his friends on a group call just in case, as well as to keep away the inevitable boredom which would descend upon him had there been silence. 

“Just a news notification,” MJ said. 

“Wait wait wait,” Ned interrupted, desperate to get away from the ‘is water wet’ discourse, “it’s about you, Peter. Well, Spider-Man, technically.”

“Really?” Asked Peter, landing on the roof of a building. Below him in the alleyway, he could see a girl about his age being cornered by a man that was not only much larger than her, but also appeared to be a decade or two older. 

“One sec guys, there’s crime, so I’m going to mute the call.” Karen, reading his mind, shut off his friend’s voices as he swung down into the alley and looked at the girl just to make sure before tapping on the man’s shoulder. 

“Excuse me sir, but I think you’re making that girl uncomfortable.”

The man turned around, saw him, grinned with a smile that was fake and more than a little bit horrifying. 

“Oh, there’s no need to worry. Me and Caroline here were just having a friendly chat is all. Walk right by, no need to stick your little nose into our business.” The girl could do little more than shake her head mutely.

“Didn’t seem to friendly to me, sir.” Peter gestured at the girl. “I’m thinking that maybe you should just leave her alone.”

“Pshh, it’s fine, boy. Move along, nothing to see here.”

“Mister, I’m asking you to leave very politely right now, but what I’m really saying is that if you don’t go away I will unfortunately have to move you.”

“You couldn’t move me, little boy. In fact, you are far smaller than you look on TV. I think you should be the one moving, while me and Caroline finish our little talk.”

At this, Peter stepped forward, kicked the man in the shin with enough force to make him fall over, picked him up before he could hit the ground, and yeeted him not so gently onto the roof he was just standing on. He then proceeded to web him up for good measure. He then swung back down to the girl.

“Hi,” he said, holding out a hand. “What’s your name?”

“Annabel.” 

“Nice to meet you, Annabel. I’m Spider-Man. Would you like me to walk you home, or are you good to go on your own?”

“I’m okay. My apartment’s only a block or two away.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for that. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“Hey, that’s what I’m here for. Stay safe!” He gave her a high five, which was nice, and then swung away.

“Hey Karen, can you unmute the call?”

“The cutest selfie on Harley Keener’s Instagram,” read MJ. “It’s heavily implied by their conversation that the two know each other.”

“Hey guys, I’m back. What are y’all talking about?”

“MJ’s reading a buzzfeed article about how Spider-Man and Harley Keener are dating,” Ned answered. Peter made a confused noise in the back of his throat.

“It’s because of those pictures we posted a few days age when we were testing out the pressurized web-shooters,” Harley explained. “And buzzfeed isn’t wrong, per se, because technically we are dating-”

“It’s just that officially, Harley’s dating Peter you, not Spider-Man you,” MJ finished. “Not that most people know you two are dating anyways, just like, us, but it might be a bit more of a problem if people find out.”

“It’s not a problem yet though, right? Who knows that Harley and I are dating?” Peter asked.

“As far as we know, the people that know about you two are mostly the ones that know about your identity as well, so we aren’t really worried about it on that front,” Ned said.

“At least we aren’t worried about you, anymore than we usually are,” MJ continued. “I’m pretty worried about Harley’s mental health right now, actually.”

Harley made a hurt noise, but didn’t interrupt or contradict her. 

“And why’s that?” Peter veered back towards the the path he usually took while on patrol, a spiral which centered at his and May’s apartment in the center of Queens and continued outwards into Brooklin. The whole thing took a few hours to patrol, more if it was more crime heavy than usual, so Peter typically patrolled only a portion on weekdays unless he had an randomly large amount of time on his hands like today. 

“He wants to feed the media and make it seem like you two actually are dating,” MJ said. “Not that it would be hard, since you two are disgustingly sappy 100% of the time anyways.”

If you were to have seen Peter as he swung through the city, and given that you had comic book vision, you might have been able to physically see the question mark that appeared over his head. As it was, his friends were still able to practically hear his confusion through the phone even though he was silent.

“Why?”

“Because,” said Harley, “it would be ridiculously easy to do, not to mention fun to trick the media. We don’t have to do it for a long time, of course, because that’d be dumb and also I don’t want to give up being publicly affectionate to you, but also why not?” 

“Harley, babe, maybe we could try not trying to trick the media?”

“But that would be taking the boring option, and as we both know, I am anything but boring. Can’t say the same about you though!”

MJ interrupted them with a small cough. “So if you two are done flirting, may I add that Peter’s curfew is almost up and he may want to head back to his apartment hair he doesn’t want to get into trouble with his aunt?”

Peter glanced at the time in the corner of his vision. It was, indeed almost 11:00. 

“Oof guys, gotta go.” Peter hurriedly started swinging towards his apartment. “Harley, we are discussing this later.” 

He could still hear his friends laughing as he climbed through his window and took off his mask.

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

Harley, for whatever reason, had over a million followers on Instagram. Don’t ask him why, because he’ll go on a long spiel about how people want to see his beautiful face or whatever. It’s actually because Tony Stark is following him and people want to see more pictures of Tony. Not that he disappoints, on that front. Almost a third of the pictures on his Instagram are of Tony doing something or other that Harley felt he had to share with the world at large.

Anyways, on Saturday his Instagram story was the following:

First, a ten second video of Tony working on something hunched over his work table, singing along to some upbeat song in Italian. The camera zoomed in on Chad, one of Peter and Harley’s spider-bots as he futilely offered Tony a sandwich.

Next was a video clip from inside of what faithful followers would recognize as part of Harley and Peter’s lab. Well, Harley and his partner’s lab. Peter had never actually appeared on Harley’s Instagram, though his voice was heard and he often appeared to be the cameraman. The video depicted a beaker full of some clear liquid as a vial of orange liquid was poured into it. A hand holding a glass stirring stick vigorously stirred the beaker until it overflowed with a white sticky foamy substance. The stick was pulled up to reveal that the substance was in fact Spider-man’s web fluid.

After this, for a few hours, there was nothing. Harley Keener was either active on Instagram and constantly uploading stuff to his story or he’d forget about social media for a month straight. There was no in between. However, after he had finished dinner, he seemingly decided to go for a stroll while livestreaming on Instagram, just for funzies. In all actuality this was all planned beforehand, so we all know what’s coming next. 

“Hey guys,” Harley said to the almost 100,000 people watching. “I’m bored, so I’m going to go to the lab and show you guys what me and my lab partner have been working on.”

He did a quick question and answer session on the way there but once he got there he began to show off the widow bites that he and Peter actually had worked on for a bit that day. At that moment, Peter in his Spider-Man suit came down the stairs that led to his spider room. Not that the camera could see him. It could see Harley though, as he sat up and grinned wide.  
“Oh, hey dude! Say hi to the internet!”

The screen flipped around so that the camera could see Spider-man as he made his way very carefully down the stairs, which, admittedly, were just slabs of wood sticking out of the wall. At the bottom, he seemed to notice that the camera was on him and waved. 

“Hi internet.” Spider-man went over to sit next to Harley on the couch while he switched the camera around again. 

“Spider-man, tell the world what good friends we are!”

Spider-man looked into the camera like he was on the office. “The very best,” he said dryly.

Harley put his arm around his shoulders. “And what do you love most about me?”

Spider-man sighed, like he was used to it at this point. “Your humility, clearly.”

“Do you love me?”

“No.”

Harley put the hand that wasn’t holding the phone by his mouth, as if trying to keep Spider-man from hearing. “He loves me,” He stage whispered. The phone was just able to catch Spider-man saying “yeah, right” under his breath. The livestream ended, but just over a minute later there was a silent two second video of the camera zoomed in on Spider-Man’s butt as he disappeared back up the stairs. His followers went insane, and Harley did nothing but watch the chaos unfold. He was already having a great time. 

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

Phase two of Peter and Harley’s plan was in action. Peter, as Spider-man, was doing his usual patrol route at his usual time. Harley, meanwhile, was taking an innocent walk at the Flushing Meadows Park, where there was only the usual amount of tourists. Still, the number of cameras was sufficient for what they had in mind. After the livestream the day before, they had already seen a number of twitter posts and such on him and Spider-man’s relationship. 

Harley relaxed on a bench near a small grove of trees and tapped on the screen of his watch.

 

Direct Message To: Peter-man

Harles <3: I’m in position~  
Harles <3: how much longer till u get here

Peter-man: few min away  
Peter-man: I’ll tell you when I’m almost there

 

Harley pulled his phone out of his pocket and went through the motions of checking his social media and such. Out of the corner of his eye he made sure there were tourists about. The small grove of trees they had picked out the day before was purposely not too far from the street, across from which were a couple of skyscrapers and such. And it was definitely small- it consisted of four trees grouped mildly together with a path going right through the middle with a convenient bench right by the first tree.

Soon, his watch vibrated on his wrist and he put his phone away and stood up from the bench, seemingly done resting his feet and ready to continue walking about the park. He wandered rather slowly through the trees, and just as he paused at the last one Spider-man flew through the air and landed right in front of him, making him jump. There were no tourists within hearing distance, so he smiled and hip bumped Spider-Man, keeping a cheerful smile on his face.

“Did you really have to scare me?” He asked in a conversational tone.

Spider-Man pulled him closer by the waist. “Did you count the tourists before I got here? How many cameras do you think are on us?”

Harley laughed as if Spider-Man had just told a particularly funny joke. “At least 6 people are filming right now, but only two or three are close enough to get a decent video.”

“You want me to swing you back to the tower or stick around for the press?” Spider-man let Harley press just a little bit closer into his side. 

“I’m coming with you. Can’t wait to see the reaction this’ll cause.” Harley wrapped one of his own arms around Spider-man's waist and and as soon and he was set Spider-man shot a web across the street and swung them away towards the tower. On the way Harley looked around and counted the number of camera trained on them. The two purposely swung past a couple of news places and such, if only to get a reaction, and eventually landed on the roof of Stark Tower. A quick peck later, Harley disappeared through the trapdoor kept on the roof just for this purpose, and Peter swung off to finish his patrol. That was one of the few rules they had agreed on- Peter wouldn’t compromise his plans or superhero duties to participate in Harley’s shenanigans. 

After eating dinner at Stark Tower with the two of the three Starks, the three settle on the couch for Family Time™. Harley pulled out a novel that he had been saving up for a while- it was the sequel to the one he’s been reading a week or two back. Pepper turned on the TV and checked the news while Tony pulled out his phone and went through his emails. 

At seven pm sharp the short tune that started off the news played and two reporters appeared on the screen.  
“For our first story of the night,” said the blonde, “some local news that’s spreading through New York in the form of rumors and the occasional picture of video. We’re here to clear things up again. 

So surely we all know the young man Harley Keener, who is currently living in Stark Tower under the watchful eye of Tony Stark. He was the subject of quite a few rumors a couple of months ago, but they were mostly proved false after a press conference held by Mr. Stark himself. Now, however, a new rumor arises.”

“Right,” continued the other reporter. “And that rumor is of a blossoming romance between Mr. Keener and the hero of Queens- Spider-man. While the identity of Spiderman is a mystery, we do know that he is still a minor as Mr. Stark refuses to let him sign the Accords until he turns 18 and subsequently reveals his identity. Just today however, Harley Keener was caught on camera with the masked vigilante, and it does leave us asking questions. Play the clip, Christine.”

“You got it, Steve.”

The clip filled the screen. It was bad quality and shaky, but the scene was unmistakably what the two had played out earlier at the park. And it had only been a few hours! Harley was rather impressed. 

The news anchor returned to the screen. “The footage you just saw was posted to a Spider-man fan account at 5:34 this afternoon, during the time that Spider-man typically patrols. The person Spiderman leaves with has been identified as Harley Keener, especially after several clips have been uploaded to the internet of the two swinging through the city together towards Stark Tower. Now, Steve, what do you think of that footage?”

Rob turned to the camera. “Well, I’m not one to jump to conclusions, especially romantic ones, but they certainly seem close. Not to mention the Instagram story Mr. Keener posted three days ago, as well as those selfies he posted. Those certainly hint at a relationship a bit closer than ‘just friends’.”

“And I’ve never seen him carry anyone like that, not even civilians that he’s saved in the past. It’s hypothesized across the internet that the two are in a relationship, but as of now nothing has been confirmed by either of them.”

“Thanks Christine. Now onto more unfortunate news…”

Pepper turned and looked Harley straight in the eye. He didn’t even bother looking at Tony. 

“Harley.” Pepper gently put her hand on his arm. “Are these your shenanigans again?”

“...yes.”

Pepper stood up and straight up walked out of the room. Tony made to follow her, but turned to Harley with a smirk at the door. Harley raised an eyebrow at him, but he said nothing and Tony turned back around and left, presumable to go to his lab. Harley only stared after them for a few seconds before turning off the TV and heading off to his room to skype call Peter. 

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

The next day was Monday, which meant that Peter spent the afternoon at the tower for internship stuff. Coincidentally, Monday was also one of the days of the week when Aunt May had the late shift at the hospital, but we don’t particularly talk about that. They had both finished their homework and were now scrolling through their tag on Instagram to keep them from boredom while waiting for one of the two adults to get back to the penthouse. 

“This fanart’s pretty good,” Harley commented.

“How is there already fanart?” Peter asked incredulously.

“I don’t know, artists are fast I guess. I’m sure there’s already fanfic out there somewhere. I know there’s already a tag for us on AO3.”

“You read fanfiction about us?” 

“Well, about the Avengers, but close enough. Our ship name is spiderley.”

“That’s… actually probably one of the most pleasant combinations of our names I could think of.”

“I know right? The fans did us good. Oh, check out this one, it’s my favorite so far.”

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“So can I?”

Peter sighed in exasperation as Harley pulled out his best puppy-dog-eyes. The piece of fanart Harley was referring to was digitally drawn, and featured Harley sitting on the purple couch he so often featured in his livestreams. Spider-man dangled from the ceiling above him, his mask pulled up just enough to expose his mouth. Both were grinning widely and Peter had to admit that it was exceptionally cute, not to mention well drawn. 

“So long as you ask the artist before you do anything,” Peter told him.

“Ayyy!” Harley bumped his knuckles against Peter’s. He quickly messaged the artist, and within seconds he had permission and was posting the image on his own account. 

His caption read: “Can’t confirm or deny but hey, the artwork’s pretty cute.” He tagged the artist and only hashtagged #spiderley. Buzzfeed reacted before the hour was up. 

~Harley Keener Accepts The “Spiderley” Ship Name~  
Not that he’s confirming anything about his rumored romance with the vigilante, but he clearly isn’t opposed to it.

As Peter and Harley read the same article on their separate phones, occasionally giggling and poking the other person to show them something they had just read, the elevator doors opened and Tony stepped out. He, too, was looking at his phone, and as he left the elevators and both heads on the couch popped up, he showed them his screen. It was unmistakably the same Buzzfeed article both of them had pulled up on their own phones. The look on his face told them that he knew exactly what they were doing. Then Tony grinned and looked back down at his phone.

Both Harley and Peter’s phones buzzed at the same time and they both looked down. It was a notification from Twitter that Tony Stark had just posted something or other. Peter immediately clicked on it, but Harley looked Tony straight in the eye as he locked his phone and put it on the coffee table. Tony just kept on grinning, so Harley looked over Peter’s shoulder to see what had been posted. 

It was a photo from a little over a year back, from before they were dating, when Harley first found out that Peter was Spider-man. It depicted the two hugging in front of a broken floor to ceiling window, Harley having just clearly launched himself into Peter’s arms. They were both grinning, though you couldn’t tell with Peter as he had his mask on, and from the angle Harley could tell that FRIDAY had taken it. Tony and Pepper were smiling in the background while watching them, and the sky outside was bright blue. 

They both remembered the moment perfectly, and without a word at the same time, Harley grabbing his phone to do so, they both saved the photo and set it as their wallpaper. Peter looked up at Tony, who had come over to the couch and was now leaning over the back of it, grin still stretched across his face. 

“I want this printed out and framed,” he told Tony. 

“Tell that to the internet. I’m sure they’ll go wild.”

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

So, neither boy had ever been on a talk show before, but it figured that their first one would be right after someone caught them kissing in public. I mean, not that they were actually kissing. Seriously, one little peck before Spider-man goes off to fight some potentially dangerous mutant and suddenly it’s “the kiss of the century”? There wasn’t even any mouth on mouth contact! He had still been wearing the mask! But noooo, somebody had to spot them and take a hecking picture like it wasn’t an invasion of privacy or anything. And then the internet went insane, and now Harley and Peter, still in his suit, are on Ellen’s couch being filmed for TV. 

It was all pretty basic stuff to start out with, and Harley and Peter didn’t want to drag on the joke for too long so they had planned out what they were going to say to the inevitable question beforehand. Ellen started with the easy stuff first though, which was nice. Tony Stark’s prodigies, nobody is related biologically, of course we have matching Iron Man t-shirts, yeah I know who he is under the mask, I work with him all the time, stuff like that. 

Then, Ellen said, “So, there’s been a lot of rumors flying around about you two right now-”

“You owe me ten bucks,” Harley said suddenly. Spider-man audibly sighed under his mask. 

“I bet him ten dollars you would ask about it within the first five questions. He said first seven,” Spider-man explained.  
Ellen laughed. “Well, had to get warmed up first. Now, it was all just rumors until recently, right before that mutant with the horns. Now, we have a clip-”

Spider-man sighed again. “She has a clip.”

“Shall we watch the clip?” Ellen asked, smiling.

Harley grinned and elbowed Spider-man in the side. “Let’s watch the clip.”

The crowd clapped as the clip came on; just a short video someone had taken with their phone as Harley grabbed Spider-man by the suit and pecked him on the mouth before untangling their hands and letting him swing away. The clip cut off and the viewers could clearly see Spider-man hiding his masked face in his hands. Ellen turned to him.

“So, you and Harley.”

“Me and Harley,” he grumbled, voice muffled.

“What’s the story here?”

He finally took his heads out of his hands to look at her with a dead expression, though the audience couldn’t tell. “There isn’t one.”

“Come on now, you two kissed!”

“Not really a kiss,” interrupted Harley. “There was a mask in the way. He was rather adamant about that detail. No mouth and mouth contact.”

Spider-man turned to him. “You forgot to mention that it was staged.” 

Harley turned to face the camera. “It was staged.”

“So you two aren’t actually dating?” Ellen asked.

“We aren’t,” the two boys said at the same time. It was almost creepy. 

“It was really just a joke that everyone bought,” explained Harley. “That picture that Tony tweeted out was his idea though. That one’s from about a year ago, when I first found out Spidey’s identity.”

“Yes,” Ellen said. “We were all rather curious about that one. So why the trick?”

“Well,” Spider-man said, “Harley and I were working on some of my tech in the lab and I was testing it out, and so Harley filmed it and posted it on his instagram.”

“And it was hilarious and great, of course.” continued Harley, “And everything started getting even better when people started shipping us. And let me make this clear, the whole “let’s pretend we’re dating or whatever” idea was all me.” 

“We’re great friends, so it wasn’t too awkward, especially since neither of us are actually straight,” Spider-man explained. “We had to ask Harley’s boyfriend though.”

This was another thing they had agreed on in advance. Harley was now officially dating Peter Parker and the entire internet would know it, provided that Ellen asked the fated question. 

“Oh?” said Ellen, raising her eyebrows. “And who’s the boyfriend?” 

“Peter Parker,” Harley looked at the camera again and waved. “I know he’s watching this. Hey Pete!” Little did Ellen know, Peter was sitting right there trying not to die of laughter. 

Before she could say anything though, Spider-man spoke up. “So yeah, everything just kinda of blew out of proportion, and Buzzfeed didn’t really help with that. Spiderley trended on Twitter for a while, which was interesting for sure.”  
“The fanart is cute though,” Harley piped up, “So I’ll continue to post that if it’s fine with you?” He turned to look at Spider-man at the last part of his sentence.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he said. “I’ll probably post some too.”

“Okay you two, so now we’ll be moving on to a little game I created…

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

It was a few days later while Peter was heading to bed in his room at Stark Tower for the night when he noticed the picture on his bedside table. It was almost the same one of Peter and Harley embracing that Tony had tweeted out a few days ago, but taken a few seconds later, once Peter’s mask was off and they were both laughing on the ground. He smiled softly at it, put his mask on the table next to the picture, and left the room to say goodnight to his new found family.

**Author's Note:**

> So! That one was pretty long, but I’m really proud of it. It really drained my energy though, so the next few are going to be pretty short- around a thousand or two thousand words each. Something like that. 
> 
> This fic was inspired a lot by 5 Times The World Thought Harley Keener Was Dating Spiderman by tempestaurora ( https://archiveofourown.org/works/16893849 ) and you guys should really check it out! I'm a huge fan of their series "Wayward Sons" and I feel kind of bad for stealing a lot of their ideas for this fic. Also, thanks MK95 for telling me to give credit :P
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, please leave comments and stuff for me because they really make my day better. Seriously comments feed my soul.
> 
> Have a wonderful day <3


End file.
